(07-12-2021 06:21 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(07-11-2021 09:49 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  In CFB at 3-3 with just 12 in the playoffs you're still going to have to have a really great record to make the playoffs. Probably two losses, maybe three at most. That's a very high bar. And at 3-3 you've run out of time.

Except if two of those losses were OOC, you are maybe 2-1 in conference and still very early days in the conference championship hunt. This is the reason why media partners would value the "Top X conference champions" part of the package. And if most of your in-division games are later in the season, a lot of your destiny may still be in your hands, in terms of what losses you can inflict on your division rivals to make sure they also have a conference loss and have the head on head over them.

There will be exceptions sure, just like in the NFC East last year there were teams in the hunt with 5-7 records because the divisions was so bad. Nut the bottom line to me is that 12 teams out of 120 or whatever isn't going to keep mediocre teams in the hunt anything like the NFL system, with 12 out of 32 making it, does. That's still a very exclusive playoff.

Not that keeping mediocre teams in the hunt is a good thing - IMO it isn't, but that's another issue.

As for the NFL playoffs, I think the ratings show that a lot more than just fans of the teams involved are watching. They draw national audiences. The CFP does too, for all of the criticism of it.

The thing I worry about is more local - sure, in CFB like in all sports, attendance tends to vary with performance. With a few exceptions, like schools with 200-game sellout streaks and the like, if Arkansas is having a good year it will draw more fans than if it is having a bad year. But "good" and "bad" have never been dependent on making playoffs. If CFB moves to a pro-leagues style "playoff culture", that could change, and it could work against home attendance, because I suspect more teams can create an impression of having a "good year" in November under the current standards than under a playoff standard.

This happens in the NFL too, but the NFL has a different business model - over 50% of NFL revenues come from TV deals, and that money is basically split evenly across the league. So fluctuations in attendance don't hurt as much (about 15% of NFL revenues are home attendance, the remainder is corporate sponsorships). Even NFL teams with fans staying away in droves and wearing paper bags on their heads in embarrassment are still rolling in dough from the league revenues.

On the other hand, despite the big P5 conference media deals, most CFB programs still rely much more heavily on local sources of revenue. For example, Alabama gets about $45 million from the SEC, but more than $100 million from money linked to game attendance. For G5 schools, the conference revenue is peanuts compared to their overall budgets.